Search results : 1106

On 9 July 2019, French MPs adopted a bill to combat online hate speech by 434 votes to 33, with 69 abstentions. The bill, called for by the President of the Republic and tabled by majority party MP Laetitia Avia, requires Internet platforms and search engines – if they meet various thresholds that will be set by decree – to remove or block content that is "obviously"illegal within 24 hours of it being reported, or risk a fine of up to EUR 1.25 million. The content concerned is that which “obviously infringes the provisions of Article 6(I)(7)(3) of the Law ontrust in the digital economy (LCEN) and...

Act No. 2019-759 of 24 July 2019 “creating a tax on digital services and changing the trajectory of corporate tax cuts” was gazetted on 25 July 2019. The "GAFA tax", which was promoted by Minister of the Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire, is based on European draft legislation that was not passed because of reticence on the part of several European Union member States. That leaves France as a pioneer. The newly-created tax amounts to 3% of the turnover generated by certain digital activitiesin France. It covers revenue from targeted on-line advertising, connecting Internet users on platforms,...

A year after it was launched last May by Emmanuel Macron and Mark Zuckerberg, and shortly before the French President and Facebook’s CEO met again at the Elysée Palace, the social network regulation taskforce published its report on 10 May. The taskforce’s remit was to lay the ground for a general regulatory framework, building on the fight against online hate speech and relying on Facebook’s voluntary cooperation outside any legal framework. Discussions between Facebook and the taskforce have been held, for example, at several meetings in Paris, Dublin (home of Facebook’s European headquarters)...

On 13 May 2019, the President of the Republic announced the creation of a EUR 225 million public investment fund to support companies in the cultural sector and the development of equity loans in the sector. The announcement followed the publication of a report by Dominique Boutonnat on the private financing of film and audiovisual production and distribution. Everyone in the film and audiovisual industries agrees that the funding of French audiovisual production is about to be radically transformed. They point to a number of warning signs, including a structural decline in the average budget of...

The French Competition Authority (Autorité de la Concurrence) received an application from the companies Groupe Canal Plus, D8 and D17 (which have since become C8 and C Star) denouncing the practices applied by TF1, France Télévisions and Métropole Télévision in the marketplace for the acquisition of rights in respect of ‘catalogue’ cinematographic works originally made in French (œuvres cinématographiques d’expression originale française - referred to as ‘EOF films’). The obligations to invest in cinematographic production incumbent on the free DTT channels are set out in Decree No. 2010‑747 of...